Thursday, August 2, 2012

PUNE’S VULNERABILITY TO TERRORISM

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR: PAPER NO.759

B.RAMAN

In the light of the four low-intensity blasts in Pune on August 1,2012,
there is a need for a co-ordinated revisit toreports being received from time to time since 2002 on the attraction of
Pune for terrorist elements----indigenous as well as foreign.

2.Pune as a possible centre for jihadi activities
came to notice in March 2002, when Abu Zubaidah, the then No.3 to Osama bin
Laden, was arrested by the Pakistani authorities acting at the instance of the
USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in the house of an activist of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) at Faislabad in Pakistani Punjab and handed over to the
FBI. He is now in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba. Sections of the
Pakistani media had reported at that time that Abu Zubaidah, a Palestinian, had
studied computer science in Pune before crossing over into Pakistan and joining
Al Qaeda.

3.In September-October,2008, the Mumbai Police had
arrestedfour IT-savvy members of the Indian Mujahideen (
IM), who had played a role insendingE-mail messages in the
name of the IM before and after the Ahmedabad blasts of July, 2008, and before
the New Delhi blasts of September,2008, by hacking into Wi-fi networks in
Mumbai and Navin Mumbai. Three of them were from Pune. The four persons were:

Mohammed
Mansoor Asgar Peerbhoy aka Munawar aka Mannu. A 31-year-old resident of Pune,
who was allegedly working for an American Internet company in its Indian office
as a well-paid executive.

Mubin
Kadar Shaikh, a 24-year-oldgraduate of
computer science from Pune.

Asif
Bashir Shaikh, a 22-year-old mechanical engineer from Pune. In addition to
helping in sending the E-mail messages, he also reportedly played a role in
planting 18 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Surat, all of which failed
to explode.

Mohammed
Ismail Chaudhary, a 28-year-oldcomputer mechanic, who was also suspected to have helped in planting the
IEDs in Surat.

4. Peerbhoy was reported to have joined the IM
while he was studying Arabic in Pune's Quran Foundation, which seemed to have
served as a favourite recruiting ground for jihadi terrorism.In this connection, reference is invited to
my note titled INDIA AS POSSIBLE WEB OF CYBER TERRORISM at
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2873.html

5. Pune and its Chabad Housefigured prominently inreports on the visits to India by David
Coleman Headley of the Chicago cell of the LET presentlyin jail in Chicago. Among the targets of
interest to Headley in Pune were the local Chabad House, a Jewish
cultural-cum-religious centre, which is frequented by Jewish visitors to Pune
and the local Rajneesh Ashram frequented by the Western followers of Rajneesh,
an Indian spiritual guru, who used to live in the US and was the mentor of some
sections of Western youth. Both these places reconnoitred by Headley were near
the German Bakery, but neither of them was attacked on February 13, 2010.
Instead, the German Bakery was targeted.

6. The IM was reported to have been involved in the
explosion in the German Bakery. Pune’s educational institutions attract many
foreign students from the Arab countries as well as Iran for studying computer
science and other subjects. Since there were reportedly facilities for the
study of Arabic in Pune, many Indian Muslims also go there.

7.One has the impression that the investigations
made so far by the Maharashtra Police and its Anti-Terrorism Squad as well as
by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the activities of
terrorism-prone elements in Pune after the arrest of some IT experts of the IM
originating from Pune in 2008 have been disjointed focussing mainly on solving
the instant cases without trying to see whether there were any linkages with
other and past cases.

8. Now that Pune figures in the terror map of
India, it is important to make a co-ordinated assessment of Pune’s
vulnerability to terrorism of various kinds, including identification of
pockets of possible Hindu extremism in the city. ( 2-8-12)

1 comment:

Ok - you sneaked in Hindu extremism there without any relevance. How many terrorists have you caught who think it is cool to say "Jai Shri Ram" before blowing themselves up and vis-a-vis how many who say "allah hu akbar"?